Hey, isn’t that John Travolta? Hollywood star in Winnipeg shooting JFK/Mafia movie 'November 1963' By: Photography by David Lipnowski / ChrisD.ca Posted: 12:11 PM CDT Thursday, Jul. 17, 2025 Last Modified: 12:18 PM CDT Thursday, Jul. 17, 2025 Updates

Hey, isn’t that John Travolta?

Actor John Travolta (Pulp Fiction, Grease, Saturday Night Fever) was spotted Thursday on set in the parking lot of the Red Top Restaurant on St. Mary’s Road.

Firefighter accused of violating protection order jailed for past harassment

A Winnipeg firefighter accused of violating a protection order this week has been jailed two times in the past decade for criminally harassing two different women, court records show.

In each case, Christopher Goethals was allowed to return to his job with the Winnipeg Fire Paramedic Service.

Goethals, 59, was arrested July 21 after breaching a protection order requiring he not come within 200 metres of a named protected person, police said.

Police allege Goethals was in full uniform and on “modified duties” driving a WFPS fleet vehicle at the time of the offence.

Body of second sibling pulled from lake

NUTIMIK LAKE — Twenty-four hours after the body of 10-year-old Maximo Au Ramirez was located in Nutimik Lake, searchers found the body of his 13-year-old brother, Aaron, who had gone into the water to rescue Maximo after he slipped in Saturday.

The announcement was made on social media by Nutimik Lodge in Whiteshell Provincial Park. “Our prayers have been answered” the post said. “Both boys have been recovered.”

Earlier Thursday, their parents said they are surviving their “unimaginable” loss only because of the overwhelming support they have received from the community.

In the afternoon, RCMP divers, the Hutterian Emergency Aquatic Response Team and civilian volunteers moved across Nutimik Lake, drones hovered above and media lined the beach as the search for Aaron continued.

Telecom on defensive after about 90 emergency calls fail over several hours

Bell Canada — Manitoba’s 911 service provider — is facing questions about reliability and redundancy measures after an hours-long outage outside Winnipeg, caused by a severed fibre optic cable, prevented dozens of calls from getting through Wednesday.

Bell spokeswoman Elise von Scheel said backup systems that reroute 911 calls when an outage occurs due to equipment damage also experienced “issues” after a third party cut the cable during construction “near Winnipeg.”

“Manitoba’s 911 system relies on legacy architecture that does not support the failsafes that newer systems have, which is why Bell is in the process of upgrading the ecosystem to next generation 911,” von Scheel wrote in an email.

“All Manitoba public safety answering points are planned to be migrated to the new system by the end of 2026. Migration to NG911 is the fastest and most effective remediation to prevent instances like this in the future.”

Selfie part of investigation into Grant Park football coach

A selfie of a high school football coach grinning beside a Free Press front-page story about the investigation into his professional conduct has become part of the case.

Doug Kovacs, a resource teacher at Grant Park High School who runs the Pirates football program, was put on leave in the spring.

The Winnipeg School Division employee is the subject of an investigation into allegations that athletes on his AAAA varsity team engaged in hazing that led to at least one player getting injured last year.

The Free Press has learned that on July 8 — the day it was revealed in print that Manitoba’s teacher commissioner had launched a third-party probe — a photo of Kovacs posing with a newspaper began circulating in the football community.